3/23-3/29

The primary focus of this week was to continue on with the congressional hearings. This week went significantly more smoothly for two reasons; a useful shortcut I found and a nifty new database that I've been using.
I realized that using ProQuest Congressional would be much easier if I looked up a secondary source which discusses the legislative history of the federal government's role in funding higher education and simply enter the bills the source refers to into the ProQuest search engine. Though this seemed to be a good idea because nearly every time congress meets they do so to discuss a bill or amendment. But the database did not cooperate with every bill or amendment I entered into the search bar. However, I was able to refer to the date that the secondary sources noted for each bill/amendment and was able to find some manually by scrolling through the 2,500 hits that "higher education" lead me to after narrowing the search down to hearings. This is a rather inefficient way of searching though (not quite as inefficient as our current congress- but close).
My older brother is a law student and he suggested that I use the database that he uses (as well as other law students across the country). The database is called "WestLaw" and is superb. Not only is the search engine much more cooperative that either Lexus Nexis or ProQuest Congressional, WestLaw was also able to find the bills and amendments that ProQuest seemed to have difficulty with. The only drawback to this is that my brother lives in the suburbs and I live in Chicago. That being said- I was only able to use it once when he happened to be over at my apartment. Despite this inconvenience- both he and I will be back visiting with family over Easter weekend and I'll just have to get the most out of WestLaw as I can over the weekend (which should be a rather significant amount of work).
Overall I would say this week has been a success. I was not only able to adapt to the issues that the databases that Loyola offers- I was able to utilize a highly useful one that Loyola does not offer. I was also satisfied with my ability to think outside the box and use secondary sources to point me in the right direction with hearings. That may sound rather obvious but it as nice to see that it lead to a large amount of solid sources.